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From: karn@petrus.UUCP (Phil R. Karn)
Newsgroups: net.tv
Subject: "WAR" on PBS
Message-ID: <617@petrus.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 2-Oct-85 01:11:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: petrus.617
Posted: Wed Oct  2 01:11:09 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 3-Oct-85 04:46:56 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Inc
Lines: 22

Since everybody seems to agree that the pickings on commercial TV this season
are pretty slim, I'd like to put out a strong recommendation for a new
series that has just started on PBS. "War: A Commentary by Gwynne Dyer"
is a seven-part series produced by Canadian Television. Judging from the
first part, "The Road to Total War", this promises to be well worth watching.

The first show illustrates how warfare changed in the late 1800's from
"honorable" affairs fought by relatively small professional armies for their
kings to all-out "total wars" fought by conscripts and backed by the
industrial capacity and the civilian populations of the belligerents.  In
addition to the vast increases in military casualties made possible by the
invention of the machine gun, the tank and other mechanized weapons, World
War 1 marked the first time it became both "necessary" and "acceptable" to
target civilian populations directly because of their support role.  Since
then, wars have been marked by astronomical increases in civilian
casualties, outpacing even the rapid increases in military casualties.

Obviously this is not a show to be enjoyed, but one to make you think. It's
about time shows about war were less enjoyable, and this one is an excellent
rejoinder to the nauseating "Rambo" trend.

Phil Karn


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